Mistress
by DCWash
Summary: Takes place soon after The Gang return from the Holy Land. If you’ve been keeping up with my "Dear Carter" series, it’s the first of two stories that flesh out chapter 8. However, it also works on its own. Allan, it seems, has a woman on the side.


**Title: ** Mistress

**Author: ** dcwash

**Characters: ** Allan

**Disclaimer: ** All characters belong to BBC/Tiger Aspect

**Rating:** Hopefully, this one's pretty steamy (at least, that's what I was going for) and as serves as an example of why dcwash is glad her parents don't read her fanfic. But when you really look at it, it's nothing any pornier than you can see on TV any night, maybe even before the watershed. So….choose your rating.

**Spoilers:** Possibly, very generally, for 2-12/13.

**Length:** 1090 words

Summary: Takes place soon after The Gang return from the Holy Land. If you've been keeping up with my _Dear Carter_ series, it's the first of two stories that flesh out chapter 8. However, it also works on its own, without any references to the letters sent to Carter, and will (hopefully) as a kind of part 1 to the next story I post.

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"Ah, now that's a sight for sore eyes!"

She was bending over the hearth, her back to the door, banking the fire as an end to the night, when he spoke. She nearly collapsed at the sound, not just because there was a man in her house when there hadn't been one moments before, but because of who the voice belonged to.

She paused for a moment to collect herself, then straightened and turned to face him.

"I thought you were dead!" she said.

He shook his head. "Nah. Though not for lack of trying!"

He stood there, leaning against the door frame, legs and arms crossed, with that same insufferable smile and the look in his eyes that showed he knew her for what she really was—no better than she should be—and accepted her anyway. He held her gaze, as if he knew full well that he didn't have to make a move, to even change his half-arrogant expression, to reel her in to him. He twirled a copper bangle around his finger as bait.

Once it would have been silver, perhaps even gold.

He wore a poacher's clothes and instead of his usual black. His beard, once so exactly trimmed, now looked almost shaggy. But his eyes were just as blue, and he was as lean and broad-shouldered as he had been when he disappeared. She found herself taking a step toward him despite herself.

She met him through a friend who was stepping out with one of Gisbourne's guards. It hadn't taken much persuading—all the girls knew that the best way out of a village hovel was through a man with connections, whether that meant marriage or…something else. And everybody knew there was no one better-connected of late than those associated with Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Even his lowest retainers had a certain glamour about them, with their black and yellow uniforms and swaggering ways. Her friend was quite happy with her guard, but who knew how far a girl with ambitions could go?

He had always treated her well—accommodate her when she wasn't feeling well. He was respectful to her mother, so much so that her mother moved in with her widowed sister so as to give the pair room to maneuver. He didn't immediately pounce when he came to call, but observed the preliminary niceties. And he knew how to deliver his coins and wares in such a way to give them appearance of gifts rather than of payment for services rendered. In return, she asked for no promises, was more willing with regard to his peccadilloes than she might be otherwise, and gave him a kind of monogamy.

It got so that theirs wasn't just a professional relationship. She genuinely enjoyed his company, and felt he did hers—there were times when all he seemed to want from her was conversation and a listening ear, particularly for his qualms about Gisbourne. And might he have been almost _proud_ of her? When she dropped in at the manor house, he took her arm and introduced her to his companions. Once he even invited her as his guest at an official occasion at the castle, and there were even a couple of times, when the Sheriff was gone, that he snuck her into Vasey's chamber for their trysts. It was on one of those nights—with him asleep beside her in the big bed with the feather mattress and brocade curtains, in the room with its own hearth and beeswax candles—that she realized what she had become: the mistress of a man of some power.

It was not a displeasing thought.

Then, he was gone. One day he was here, the next he had disappeared. Witnesses told her he had ridden out with the Sheriff and Gisbourne; what she hadn't been able to confirm was whether they had taken Lady Marian to the Holy Land. But when the Sheriff and Sir Guy returned from wherever they went, it was without him…or Lady Marian. She couldn't fathom what had happened, but the worries he had earlier shared made her fearful that they had killed him—perhaps for something untoward regarding Marian? There was no way to find out for sure, so she mourned for a brief while, sighed, and started over again. Life goes on.

And now here he was, so close she could feel the heat radiating off of him. (He had correctly gauged the effect his presence would have on her.) She knew she had to resist—there were standards to maintain.

"I've moved on. There's somebody else." She couldn't look him in the eye and she had to swallow hard to get the words out, but they had to be said.

"I know. I watched him ride off." He slipped the copper bangle onto her wrist and held her hand while he admired it. "Lovely! Copper really suits you."

She was sure he could see her heart pounding in her breast.

Suddenly he spun her around and flattened her against the wall beside them, holding her bangled hand above her head. He pressed against her and kissed her with the fire she remembered—he had always liked it just a little rough, and, she had learned, so did she. She squirmed a little, knowing full well that if she seriously pushed him off of her, he would let her go. But did she really want that? Or not?

"Oh, I thought you liked that. Not anymore?" His lips moved from hers to her throat. "All you have to do is say the word and I'll stop. Just say 'no.' That's all." And now down the opening of her shift to _that spot_ between her breasts, making her whimper. She felt his beard tickle, and felt the fingers of his free hand pulling her shift up, inch by inch. She was breathing harder as he moved up the other side of her throat to her ear. "Say the word and I'll go away. That's all it takes. You know that." He took her earlobe between his teeth.

He relaxed the grip on her wrist and her arm fell over his shoulders. Her other arm wrapped around his waist and his hand tangled her hair and she arched to press against him. His fingers were on her now-bare hip, gently squeezing. His whole body felt deliciously hard to her—forearms, shoulders, back, everything else.

And as she felt the old familiar flutter in her belly, she spread her legs for him, like she had so many times before.


End file.
